


This will never end 'cause I want more

by queenofchildren



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Roman Britain, Romance, mention of violence against children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-21 05:53:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6040690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofchildren/pseuds/queenofchildren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy comes to her a prisoner. He leaves a free man and returns an ally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This will never end 'cause I want more

**Author's Note:**

> Ages and ages ago, I had the idea of writing a Bellarke AU where Clarke was a Celtic warrior queen and Bellamy a Roman soldier, meeting as enemies and falling in love – this is that fic. What I did not plan on was researching two entire civilizations spanning centuries, and frankly, I did not have the time to do so. So beware of the historical inaccuracies, of which there are many. (For example, Bellamy would have been too young to be a centurion.) I hope you can still enjoy the fic.  
> Oh, and the title is from Fever Ray's "If I had a heart".

 

Bellamy comes to her for the first time dragged by his bound hands, with blood trickling down his cheek and hatred pumping through his veins. His century has followed him faithfully into battle to secure the borders of the province of Britannia, and this Barbarian queen slaughtered them and their entire legion with her witchcraft and trickery. That he is still alive is nothing short of a miracle – or, he realizes when he sees the satisfied smirk on her face, a deliberate act of cruelty.

He’s still grappling with the shock of watching her step forward and reveal herself as the tribe’s leader by the way she addresses them; warriors, elderly, mothers and children alike – and by the way they listen. He has heard that the barbarians allow women to fight and lead just like men do, that they have female clan chiefs and queens who command their armed forces, settle disputes and make laws. But he has never encountered one of these women in person, and he is not prepared for it when he does.

He thought he’d see some grotesque, fearsome figure, bigger and stronger than two men combined, but in front of him stands a girl, at least a head shorter than him, with golden hair that puts the wheat fields of Etruria to shame and curves which not even her layered clothing and bulky breeches can hide. But the softness of her figure and her youthfully rounded face are an illusion, he realizes quickly: From her husky voice to her icy blue eyes, she is all steel and barely contained rage. She may be several years younger than him, but this girl has not been a child in a very long time, and the weight of responsibility on her shoulders far surpasses the lives of the hundred men under his command.

The thought of the men he was responsible for tears him out of his straying thoughts: every single one of them dead now, and _she_ is the reason.

He briefly entertains the idea of making a grab for her dagger and waiting for her to kill him. This way, he could still tell himself that he died in battle, for the glory of his home country. But he’s not just a soldier, and he’s not alone in the world. He needs to survive, whatever the cost. He prepares himself for a slow, torturous death; for pain and humiliation… and is instead presented with fresh water and bread.

As much as he wants to spit it in her face, he wolfs down both.

She looks at him the entire time, studying him wordlessly with those cold eyes until he’s almost ashamed by the weakness of his body, by the way it makes him scramble for the little morsels of life she has deemed fit to hand him. But he’s gone without food for several days while he struggled to put as much distance between himself and the dead bodies of his fallen friends as he could, injured and disoriented and hounded mercilessly by her warriors once they spotted him. He’s going to need to keep up his strength, so his pride will just have to suffer a little.

The moment he swallows the last drop of water, she addresses him, in heavily accented but somewhat fluid Latin:

“You will tell me everything you know about your army. Their plans. Their defenses, tactics, weapons, numbers.“

Dread pools in his stomach at the words. Her apparent hospitality was only a brief respite before the torturous interrogation to come – days or weeks of it, depending on how long he lasts. When two of her warriors step forward and take him by the arms to drag him off again, he steels himself for the trials to come. He only hopes he’ll die before he can tell them anything useful.

 

***

The torture never comes. After they’ve dragged him to a hut and locked him in with his hands tied, they leave him alone for the rest of the day, only opening the door once to hand him a jug of water, a bowl of stew and a wooden bucket, presumably to relieve himself into. At this point, Bellamy doesn’t know if he should disdain them for being so weak or fear what they will come up with to make him talk. Is this all just a ploy to weaken his defenses? Are they giving him time to torture himself with thoughts of what they’ll do to him, how they will break him?

But the man who comes in at dusk does not look like a torturer. He is clad in the same garishly patterned tunic and scratchy woollen breeches as all of them, but his skin is too dark for him to be a Briton by birth, and when he opens his mouth, there is no trace of an accent to his Latin.

“You’re Roman,” Bellamy croaks out, hating himself for his weakness but nonetheless unable to resist the chance at speaking to someone who sounds so friendly and familiar.

“I lived in Rome for a very long time. I was not born there, but I was abducted and sold so young I remember very little of it.”

Bellamy grunts in response, not knowing what to say. He’s made his fair share of prisoners over the years and handed them over to be sold as slaves. Despite the man’s unfailingly amiable expression, he doubts he’ll find an ally here.

“My master took me with him to Britannia, and I escaped during an attack on his villa. Clarke took me in as if I’d been born into her clan.”

“Which clan is that?”

But the other man only smiles. “You are here to tell me things, not the other way around. We’ve estimated from the numbers slayed in battle that you must have marched here from further off – there is no fortress in this area large enough to house an army of such size for long. Is that correct?”

Bellamy does not reply, but the other man seeems unfazed.

“I’m sorry, I am going about this all wrong. My name is Wells, and I am a friend and adviser to Queen Clarke.”

For a moment, Bellamy is confused by this announcement. Then he lets out a short, wry laugh.

“You need not waste your time trying to talk to me. Just skip the pleasantries and go straight to the part where you beat me up.”

“That will not happen. My Queen forbids the use of torture against prisoners. They either talk of their own volition or they’re killed quickly and mercifully.”

“Your Queen does not seem very keen on actually getting the information she claims to want.”

“She was forced to watch her father get tortured to death, and has vowed never to do the same to another human being.”

Bellamy curls his mouth into a sneer, trying to mask the relief he’s feeling. It seems his death will be quicker and more easily suffered than he expected.

But though the other man catches sight of his expression and what it means, his sincerity does not waver.

“Do not mistake what I’ve just told you for a sign of weakness. When she finally managed to escape, she returned the next day with her warriors and razed their village to the ground. She will drive the Roman troops off her land, and you will help her.”

With that, he gets up and leaves again, leaving Bellamy behind in the encroaching darkness to mull over what he has just learned.

 

***

The Barbarian Queen may not approve of physical torture, but after three days of being locked up alone with no company except for Wells’ brief visits, he thinks that she may be trying to bore him into submission. The hut is small, and there is only so much time he can spend retreading the nine steps it takes him to get from one end of it to the other. His food is enough to keep him alive but not enough to provide much in the way of sustenance or entertainment, and above it all, there is the lingering fear of what will happen to Eboracum, where many of the soldiers who perished by his side were stationed at. Are there enough soldiers left there to defend it when the Barbarians finally attack? He can only pray to all the Gods he thinks might take an interest that there are.

And it’s not just boredom that is weighing him down. The days and weeks after a battle are always strange, when the adrenaline wears off and the memories resurface – the smell of blood and death, the feeling of his sword slicing through vulnerable flesh, the shrieks and wails of the dying men around him. With nothing to distract him, the memories become painfully vivid.

Slowly, Well’s visits start to turn into a welcome distraction, especially when the man stops asking questions Bellamy refuses to answer and starts talking to him about other things instead, about his past life for example and how he got to this village. It turns out that Wells is not the only Roman in the village: There are several escaped slaves from Gaul who decided to stay instead of trying to return to their destroyed homes, and even a woman from Hispania whose Roman master set her free when an injury crippled her and made her unsuited to physical labour. Wells’ eyes turn soft when he speaks of her, and Bellamy knows this would be valuable information if Wells was the enemy. But he’s not. Not really.

Wells may be on the side of his captors, and his visits intended to make Bellamy let down his guard, but Bellamy nonetheless enjoys talking to him – even when it is about topics where they could not disagree more, like the Roman occupation of Britannia. Somehow, they manage to have polite discussions about the very issue that should make them bitter enemies. And while he should feel like a child in school again, being forced to relearn his own history, Wells somehow manages to lessen that impression with the deft way he puts things into perspective. Apparently, his Roman master was a senator who used to practice his speeches with him, the slave who was intelligent but expendable should he ever reveal his master’s plans, and it shows: Wells asks Bellamy if he really thinks the Roman occupation is right with all the calmness of a rhetorics teacher posing a practice question, and Bellamy answers with every attempt to keep his personal motivations out of his reply. (He fails, but at least he tries.)

Not that Wells is completely free of bias. When Bellamy presents his main argument, that the Romans united many of the eternally warring Celtic tribes, he scoffs derisively, his usually placid expression growing more animated.

“A united people is not the same as a people oppressed under the same ruler.”

“We brought them _civilisation_ – a unified language, writing, knowledge of our Gods…”

“They had their own Gods long before you ever got here.”

“Consecrating a random tree and bowing before it is not a legitimate religion.”

For the first time in their talks, Bellamy sees anger flash in Wells’ eyes.

“And who are you to decide what is and is not a legitimate religion? It is hybris like this that led your compatriots to a brutal death. You are not alive because of the greatness of the Roman Empire, but because of the mercy of a Barbarian Queen. You would do well to remember that.”

Their conversation trickles out after that, and Wells soon departs, leaving Bellamy behind with the uncomfortable feeling of being wrong.

***

The next day, around the time Wells usually comes to visit him, the door opens to reveal someone else: The Queen herself.

“Wells says you are not answering his questions.”

Bellamy remains silent. He’s not answering anyone’s questions, and he will continue to do so for as long as he can.

“He advises me to talk to you himself. To offer you something you want in exchange for the information I seek. So what do you want?”

Bellamy settles back on his cot, appearing relaxed while his body remains alert and tense, ready to jump up if she comes for him. His other visitor only ever came here unarmed, with a guard placed by the door to deter him from any attempt to escape. The woman, on the other hand, has her hand on the pommel of her sword and a boiled-leather jerkin to protect her.

“Many of my advisers disagree with Wells. They say that I have housed and fed one of our enemies long enough and that I need to try harder to make you talk.”

She pauses again, although she must know by now that she will not get a response. After a week of silence, does she expect him to start talking now?

She does not, he realizes suddenly when he sees her appraising glance – she’s thinking. Judging. Making a decision.

Then she grabs a piece of rope from her belt, wraps it arouns his wrists and starts walking towards the open door.

“Follow me.”

The tug on the rope when he doesn’t stops her short after just a few steps, but she seems unfazed.

“Follow me or be dragged after me by my horse. Your choice.”

He considers it for a moment. After being meekly locked up in a hut for a week, it may be time to show them all that there’s some fight left in him. But the idea of being dragged through the village by a horse is less than appealing. He’s bound to come away with dislocated shoulders at best, and much graver injuries at worst.

Resignedly, he gets to his feet and starts walking after her, strangely aware of his body after such prolonged inactivity. Ignoring the curious stares of bystanding villagers and the flash of shame at being led around by his bound hands, he tries to focus on more pleasant sensations: the sunshine on his face, the bracing air, the the crunch of leaves under his feet, the slight pull on his muscles when he’s finally able to take long strides again.

He didn’t have a chance to properly look at the village before, his vision too hazy with blood and exhaustion, his mind too full of death to take in the bustling life around it. Now that he does look at the peaceful scene, he is struck by how much it reminds him of his small hometown. The old women at their looms, younger women getting water from the well where the queen stops and fill a bucket with water for him to carry; the children playing with dice and hoops and small figurines, the soldiers sparring in a cordoned-off area of the village square – except for their strange garb and the fact that there are women among the warriors, they all seem so familiar that he is hit with a sudden pang of longing for his home. Or rather, since he hasn’t seen his home in almost a decade, for the idea of a home, of a domestic scene like this where he isn’t relegated to the position of onlooker but part of the community.

He slows down to watch the sparring warriors, the women just as strong and agile as the men and bearing very little resemblance to the dainty, elegant ladies being paraded around Roman streets in gilded palanquins. Octavia would love it here, he thinks, but doesn’t have time to dwell on that before the rope is pulled taut again and he continues walking. He should fight now, he knows, should put up a show of resistance that would probably cost him his life but restore his honour, at least partly.

He doesn’t get a chance before they step into another hut, this one set back a little from the village square. In the dim light of the low-ceilinged building, he’s only able to make out the large table near the entrance and the rows of jars and woven baskets sitting on benches near it. Then a low moan draws his attention to the other side of the room, where he spots a long row of narrow cots, all of them filled with men and women in various levels of pain. Some of them are sleeping peacefully, some thrashing about feverishly, some moaning in constant pain, some take slow, rattling breaths that seem to spell imminent death.

“These are the warriors who were injured when your army crossed into our territory. Many more did not survive. You are not the only one who lost friends in that battle.”

He tries to harden his heart against the sight, to come up with something pithy that shows just how little he cares what happened to her people – not after they’ve wiped his legion from the face of the earth.

But it seems she’s not waiting for any sort of apology or change of heart from him. She retrieves a clean piece of cloth from one of the baskets and drops it into the bucket of water she made him carry here, before unbinding his hands and handing him the heavy wooden bucket.

“Now you’ll help me wash them, clean their wounds and change the dressings to prevent infection.”

He snorts derisively. It’s a nice little spectacle she puts on for him, but he does not buy into the pageantry for one second.

“You expect me to believe that, as their Queen, you personally see to your sick and injured?”

“Whenever I have the time.”

Her answer is so sincere, her movements when she starts unwrapping the soiled bandages on the first of her patients so practiced, that he fails to come up with a biting retort. Instead, he follows her demonstration of how to unwrap bandages without causing too much pain, how to thoroughly wash the wounds and cover them with a pungent-smelling poultice before wrapping them again in clean bandages.

If her stint as a healer really is an act, she is at least dedicated to see it through, even cleaning up the table after all the patients have been seen to and putting the soiled bandages into a pot of water above the fire to boil them.

When they finally leave the infirmary and she leads him back to her hut, he’s exhausted to the bone. His injured leg has barely healed, and he didn’t exactly do much to regain his strength since then.

Unfortunately, his enjoyment is short lived: It’s only a short walk until she enters another hut similar to the one he was imprisoned in, only bigger and in better condition, though not by much. The one-room hut is about ten steps in diameter, ridiculously small for any kind of leader, let alone a queen, and there’s nothing in it except for a large trunk, a small table and stool and a rack for her mail shirt, sword and shield. The only object that is at all ornamental is her bed, carved out of dark wood and polished to perfection, with a plush mattress filled with fragrant moss and covered with finely woven sheets and soft furs. Its luxuriousness presents a stark contrast to the otherwise spartan décor, and Bellamy averts his eyes before the sight can conjure images of her that he has no use for.

To his shock, she bids him stay and points to a straw pallet in the corner. Apparently, he will not return to his prison. Whatever she’s planning, Bellamy cannot help but start feeling a little bit intrigued by it. She returns late in the evening, binds his hands so he can’t attack her in her sleep, and goes to bed herself. Before he can even avert his eyes, she strips out of her tunic and breeches, either genuinely unconcerned by his presence or determined to act as if he was not here, not male, or not even human. But he is all of those things, and even after he has closed his eyes, the sound of cloth sliding over skin leaves his mind reeling with questions and his body thrumming with something he calls weakness, because that’s all it is. But this weakness will not bring him down, he promises himself.

 

***

The days pass like this, with her dragging him with her almost everywhere she goes except for, presumably, meetings where she discusses matters vital to their clan’s defense. She always gives him chores to do, which bring him into contact with her people and keep his mind occupied during the day. But they are not always physically taxing enough to calm his sleep, and more often than not, he wakes from nightmares with a gasp and the names of dead men on his lips to find her watching him. He turns away determinedly, unwilling to share this vulnerable part of him with her. She insists on it anyway, ever the spoiled queen.

“What is troubling you?”

“What do you think?”

It’s a rhetorical question, intended to elicit silence rather than an answer, but she replies nonetheless.

“You feel guilty to be alive, and even guiltier that you’re happy about it.”

That about sums it up.

“And it sure as hell does not help that I’m being held here, damned to uselessness.”

“You could be useful.”

“Not to the people I have a duty to.”

“And who are those people? Your emperor, who has yet to send a single man after the entire legion he lost in one day? You are expendable to him, and yet you persist in your loyalty. Why?”

No one has ever asked him this, invited him to question his loyalty. He never thought about whether or not he should be following the emperor’s orders – he just always did. In his surprise, he blurts out:

“It’s not him I’m loyal to.”

It is something that has always been true, though he has never dared to utter it. But he only joined the army because a series of bad harvests had made it impossible for him and his sister to make a living off their mother’s farm. Twenty years in the army would earn him a handsome salary, allowing him to both support his sister and save some money to settle down once he got discharged after his time was up. The glory of Rome was never a part of his plans.

And that may be precisely why he cannot give her what she wants.

“Even if I did decide to tell you what you want to know, I am not nearly important enough to know anything of use. I’m a centurion, you know what that means? It means that out of the thousands of men in a legion, I lead exactly one hundred. That’s it. I know nothing more than the direction I am supposed to walk in. I am nobody and I cannot help you win this war.”

“You can. I know it. But perhaps not in the way I assumed…”

She trails off thoughtfully, ominously, and now he is getting scared for his life once again. Now that he has revealed just how insignificant he is in the grand scheme of things, does she plan to make use of him some other way? Sacrifice him to one of her gods maybe?

To his surprise, she continues to talk, her voice taking on a faraway, dreamy quality.

“You see, I never wanted to take you here. But my father saw a vision, years and years ago, that three people would come from the South, dark-haired servants of Rome, and help us defend our lands and drive them off. I did not believe it at first, unlike my father, who clung to the hope of the prophesy to his dying breath. And now two of those people have already come and done their part: Wells has taught me to speak your language and understand a little bit about how your society works and what you want here. Raven has put her brilliant mind to use inventing traps and machineries that have allowed us to fend your army off so far. And just as it seemed like we were losing after all, you appeared, the sole survivor of the bloodiest battle this land has seen in generations.”

He can’t see her in the darkness, but her voice is growing so animated, he can practically imagine her cheeks heating up, her eyes glinting with excitement to make her look unlike the cold marble statue she resembled when he first saw her.

“Don’t you see? You are the answer to my people’s troubles. You say that you were a nobody to your people? Well, you can be a hero to mine.”

She falls silent then, leaving him to mull over her words for the rest of his sleepless night.

 

***

Their days continue with work and conversations with the villagers and even – a rare treat! - a round of sparring in the village square that soon has everyone around them watching and placing bets. She wins by a hair’s breadth, which tells him both that he is in much worse shape than he expected and that she is a formidable warrior indeed. (It also tells him that her grace and beauty are not marred by the force and frenzy of the fight but enhanced by it – with a sword in her hand, she goes from impressive to terrifying. But then she returns to their hut and takes off her clothes and there’s nothing left of the warrior in her and nothing of the proud, disdainful prisoner in him.)

But underneath all the work, all the distractions, all the troubling thoughts about her which he tries to push to the back of his mind, her words about her father’s vision continue to take root, to fill him with thoughts not of fame and greatness but of redemption. Because he understands now what her strategy was in meeting him with mercy and gentleness instead of violence, and dragging him around her village like a tame animal: She wanted to show him that the people whose land he’s helped to steal are in fact _people_ , mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, friends and neighbours, farmers and tradespeople and warriors and altogether just as human as he is, and just as entitled to freedom from oppression.

He resists it for a long time, but eventually, the realization takes hold of him that he may be the villain in this story.

 

***

With every passing day, the river of conflicted feelings within him swells a little more, until inevitably, the dam breaks, with a crash that he feels reverberating through his bones and her pinned between him and the bed and her hands on his shoulders somehow both pulling him closer and pushing him away, while his lips press against hers, hungry and vengeful and scared. For several seconds, the kiss that somehow managed to be both a long time coming and a complete surprise holds them completely in thrall, binds them together against a hostile world that should want them apart.

Then her hands make a decision and settle for pushing him away.

“Stop!”

“Do you not want me?”

He sees the answer in her eyes, her flushed cheeks, her swollen lips and the fact that she was the one who kissed him. But she shakes her head.

“I only take free men and women to my bed, not prisoners. It’s not right.”

“Then free me.”

Shaking her head, she averts her eyes.

“I can’t. My people need you.”

“What if I stayed?”

“You would not. Not for long.”

He wants to deny it, to tell her he’ll stay as long as it means he gets to keep kissing her. But of course it would be a lie. He can’t stay, even if he wanted to, and he’s not even sure if he does. Surely a mere few weeks with a Barbarian queen, no matter how strong and how beautiful, can’t be enough to erase all traces of the Roman soldier he used to be proud to call himself.

 

***

She lets him go the next day, her face impassive as usual but her eyes clouded-over. She tells him that her experiment has failed, that they are destined to always be on opposite sides of this war, and he wants nothing more than for her to be wrong in this moment.

But the lure of freedom is stronger.

She gives him a water skin and a bit of bread and dried meat, and her expression when she sends him off is as stony as it was when he first laid eyes on her. But this time, there’s something else behind the hard exterior, a glimmer like water running across stones, that tells him she is not as impassive as she pretends to be.

The memory of the sight will not leave him alone on the long trip back to his garrison. He sees her everywhere – the blue of her eyes and clarity of her mind in the sky on a cold day, the gold of her hair and the strength of her hands in the reeds by the edge of a lake. And more than that, he hears her words, the way her voice turned soft when she spoke of her people, proof of a love and devotion that he has never felt for anyone but his sister, and certainly not for the people ruling over him.

He doesn’t even make it halfway to the garrison before he comes upon a burned-down village, its crumbling wreckage still smoking, its meeting-place strewn with the mutilated bodies of men, women and children alike. The few pieces of missing armour and discarded weapons tell him enough about who was responsible for the atrocious act, and his stomach turns. After months of defending his people against Clarke, the first thing he learns of them upon finally being allowed to return is that she may have been right all along.

He has heard talk of such measures, of cracking down on the Britons’ resistance by striking back against them with ever more brutal force, but so far, the prospect of valuable slaves has kept the generals from killing too many innocents. Apparently, something has changed that stance in his absence.

And then, as he gingerly makes his way through the ruins of what used to be a thriving hill fort, he discovers something that makes his blood run cold: Among the dead bodies are children, too many for them to all have died by unlucky accidents, and too close together. The closer look he forces himself to take reveals his darkest suspicion: They were executed, something that is not only cruel but unneccessary. Cruelty would not surprise him, but killing young, healthy prisoners who could be sold as slaves? That seems unusual even by the standards he has become used to, jaded from years of killing and watching others kill, of public executions and cruel corporeal punishment.

Averting his eyes from the sight of a blond braid turned red with blood, he turns on his heel and walks straight back where he came from.

If he had any doubts anymore that he made the right decision, the dead body he finds by the side of the road erases them all. The man must have been dead for a few days already, killed by robbers must likely who took his sword and armour. But they left the little leather pouch on his belt, which contains a short but very important message – and a seed of hope that makes his heart soar. He may not have been able to help her win this war before. But now, he just might.

He returns to her a deserter, unbound by her ropes but haunted by his guilt, and desperate for redemption.

 

***

She’s with her mother, Raven informs him when he gets to the village, seeing to the sick and injured at the town’s house of healing, and he feels a wave of nostalgia wash over him when he approaches the hut near the edge of the village, breathes in its distinct smell of herbs and smoke. It’s irrational, but he somehow feels as if he’s lived here forever, and been away for years instead of a few days.

The feeling only intensifies when he ducks through the low door into the hut and she turns and looks at him, serious as always but without the usual hard set of her mouth: Like this place is his home, and she his Queen.

She sets aside the rag in her hand and turns to speak to her mother, then steps toward him. The older woman shoots him a quick, worried glance.

“I have what you need to defeat them once and for all.”

And he does, right after she agrees to his only condition: They do not attack the non-military settlements. He thinks of Octavia when he asks it, waiting for word of him in Eboracum, and has to hide his relief when she agrees to the condition.

They start making plans immediately, the message Bellamy found providing them with the last small puzzle piece they need.

Raven throws herself into her work with renewed force, not only increasing her output of weapons but spending her nights inventing ever more devious methods of attacking the invaders’ legions. The flaming balls of straw and dung that broke up his legion’s rank during that fatal battle, he finds out, are her proudest work.

But for all their hours spent planning and sparring together, he still finds time to watch her, back straight and unbowed despite the weight of responsibility resting on it, eyes blazing now that she’s been set afire by hope and determination. He was afraid that his perception of her had been skewed by being forced into her proximity for so long, entirely dependent on her power and mercy. But the opposite is the case: Now that he has returned to her of his own free will, he finds that she is even more beautiful than he noticed before.

He comes to her hut the night before the battle, ostensibly to wish her well, but she sees through his flimsy excuse before he has even finished speaking, grabs his shoulders and pulls him against her. Because this is what he is _really_ here for: her lips on his, soft and inquisitive at first and then harsh and demanding from the moment he grips her waist to hold her even closer. Her luxurious bed under his back when she pushes him onto it and straddles his chest to tug off his shirt. The feeling of her silky skin sliding against his when she disrobes as well, of her center pressed hot and wet against him and her hips cradling him to set a rhythm they both get lost in.

In this, it seems, their Gods agree: on the eve of battle, one should be reminded of what it means to be alive, and this is being alive in its most primal, urgent form; all pumping blood and greedy hands and racing breaths.

They fall asleep curled into each other, spent and sated and so vulnerable in their trust, and this too is life; precious enough to be defended.

The next morning, they ride into battle side by side, their strength unwavering for as long as they remain so. But then they get divided, he loses sight of her in the frenzy and all he sees is blood, so much blood, until he finds that it’s his own and everything goes red.

 

***

He barely makes it back to her a third time. Separated from her troops and fatally injured, he somehow ties himself to his horse and hopes it will find its own way home before he passes out.

Feverish, he drifts in and out of consciousness over the next few days, but he’s sure it’s not a fever dream when she leans over him to change his bandages, presses a soft kiss into his hair and murmurs “Please come back to me. I can’t lose you again.”

Later, when he’s already able to sit up again and she has him moved into her hut, she tells him that he stayed on the horse all the way into the village, where he fell at her feet - “again”, she stresses with an impish smile – and he thinks that he could not have chosen a better person to fall for.

She was his captor and his enemy when he first met her, then his co-conspirator in planning the attack on the fort, but now, sitting by his bedside with soft smiles and soothing hands, she’s a healer and a lover and no less of a Queen because of it.

 


End file.
